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Opinion | Don't forget results of 1999 MLK trial

Randall Mullins, Guest columnist
Published 3:33 p.m. CT April 6, 2018

James Earl Ray is believed to have fired the shot that killed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from a bathroom window (fourth window from right) in the back of a South Main rooming house in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Dr. King was shot at 6:01 p.m. as he stood on the balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel, a distance of approximately 207 feet. The rifle was found in the front doorway of Canipe Amusement Company, 424 South Main, which was in the building at left. The second floor rooming house at 418 1/2 & 422 1/2 consisted of 16 units connected by a walkway. On the lower level were businesses including Jim's Grill at 418 S. Main, owned by Loyd Jowers. Ray used the alias, John Willard, when he checked into the boarding house on April 3 and had used a different alias, Eric S. Galt, when he registered at the New Rebel Motel on Lamar the previous night.(Photo: Robert Williams / The Commercial)

Coretta Scott King, in a December 1999 press conference after the only trial ever held the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stated:

“The jury was clearly convinced by the extensive evidence that was presented during the trial that, in addition to Mr. Jowers, the conspiracy of the Mafia, local, state and federal government agencies, were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband. The jury also affirmed overwhelming evidence that identified someone else, not James Earl Ray, as the shooter, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame.”

As we remember April 1968, there are sure to be repeated references to James Earl Ray as the “convicted assassin” or the “confessed assassin” of Dr. King. As Mrs. King stated, testimonies from that trial do not support this conclusion. It was never a verdict.

Ray was never “convicted” of the crime. He confessed on the strong urging of his first attorney, Percy Foreman, to avoid the death penalty and then recanted his confession two days later after firing Foreman and securing a new attorney. The state of Tennessee refused for years to grant him a trial.

To its credit the National Civil Rights Museum has one display that acknowledges the 1999 trial. But few others are even aware that a trial took place. It is almost totally absent from the media.

This matters, especially this week and during this time of heightened racial tensions, because assuming that Ray was the assassin adds tragically to the citizen denial that continues to threaten our democracy. Just as was the case in the history of over 30 lynchings that took place in Shelby County from 1865 to 1950, the very available history and evidence from this trial about who was involved in the assassination for Dr. King continues to be ignored.

The transcript from the trial, which included 12 days of testimony by over 70 witnesses, is widely available. The jury of six white and six black citizens heard testimony about involvement by the FBI, U.S. Army Intelligence, the Memphis police and the mafia.

The evidence was so convincing that after only two hours of deliberation they unanimously found “government agencies (and Loyd Jowers) guilty of conspiracy in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” Witnesses included former Memphis police officers, a former supervisor in the Memphis Sanitation Department, U.S. Rep. Walter Fauntroy who in the 1970's had served as the Chairman of a U.S. House of Representatives Committee to investigate the assassination, and members of Dr. King’s family.

The King family had worked for years for a trial, including a request that the U.S. Justice Department during the Clinton administration appoint a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, modeled after the one in South Africa, so that the truth could be widely known.

While we may never know who the shooter was who killed Dr. King, as citizens we can look at the convincing evidence that, once again, reminds us that democracy cannot survive without citizens who are wide awake.

Rev. Randall Mullins is a minister in the United Church of Christ and one of the founders of the Lynching Sites Project of Memphis.